There is an account in the Observer in which a Yazidi woman relates how she was sold into slavery by ISIS. The article adds:
ISIS said in an online article that it was reviving an ancient custom of enslaving enemies and forcing the women to become wives of victorious fighters.
“One should remember that enslaving the families of the [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the sharia, that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narrations of the prophet,” the article said, adding that mothers were not separated from their young children.”
In one sense the “ancient custom” of raping and enslaving women did not need to be revived. It had never died out. The aspect of ancient custom that had died out and has been revived by the Islamic State is of carrying out the rape and enslavement openly. That is a major change. Ever since World War II the tide of egalitarianism has been advancing; equality before the law in one place, equality at the verge of the mass grave in another, but everywhere the ideal of equality has been exalted.
Everywhere included the Islamic world. For the last half century whenever Muslims wrote about the inegalitarian aspects of Sharia they were usually at pains to describe the different treatment of women and men as being a deeper sort of equality, or as being an expression of special regard for women. Until recently even Al-Qaeda propaganda often had a slightly politically correct air.
No longer. Tides turn. Will this change add to the appeal of ISIS among Muslims, or decrease it? Will it add to the appeal of Islam among potential converts or decrease it? My impression is that, just as rape is sometimes more viscerally loathed than murder, the open practice of rape and slavery by Isis has repelled and embarrassed many Muslims more than the open practice of hostage-taking and murder by ISIS and its estranged parent Al Qaeda.
I know that to speak of the response “of Muslims” covers a vast spectrum of individuals ranging from very evil to very good. I believe, not without reason, that there is a majority who are repelled by both, albeit not the “overwhelming majority” that Western politicians pretend there is.
Once there was a movement within Sunni Islam that held that the Koran had to be interpreted by reason – that the literal words had to be judged by a moral code EXTERNAL to those words (natural morality) and by people with free will (i.e. that all events were NOT predetermined by God).
However, this movement was crushed more than a thousand years ago. What ISIS is doing is taking the mainstream doctrine (that the words of the Koran and the Hadiths and the life and deeds of Mohammed, are to be taken at face value) to its logical conclusion.
Besides this, mainstream Sunni Islam accepts the doctrine of events being predetermined by God – if ISIS scores a victory, it must be the will of God (“God wills it”).
This is an unfortunate philosophical, ethical and theological position. And it is the position of mainstream Sunni Islam.
There are indeed at least four schools of Sunni Jurisprudence and the H. school (once associated with the Ottoman Empire) is more moderate than the others – holding (for example) that a woman does not commit a crime by showing her feet.
However, would even this relatively moderate school accept that even the Koran must be held to an EXTERNAL standard of morality?
Or that events are NOT predetermined by God?
I have noticed that Muslims are selective when it comes to accepting allah’s will. Despite Allah giving victory to Israel, and giving the Israelis Jerusalem and the West Bank, no muslim seems to think that Allah has got it right, but they’ll have another battle so He can get it right!
Islam offers bad people a way to be “good”. It legitimises rape, pillage and violence and thats precisely why its so good at attracting violent people. Imagine, you are in prison for assault/rape/GBH, society and the general public are happy you are incarcerated and getting you just deserts.
Then along comes a bloke who says what you have done is praiseworthy as log as you dont do it to other members of the same group. That living on the dole and selling drugs to “the others” is in actual fact part of a holy struggle, as you are damaging unbelievers.
Its a religious equivalent of the hells angels, because you are in the “club” anything you do to those outside the club is Ok.
Kill them all, and let God sort them out.
As an opponent of both rape and slavery, I agree with much of the aforementioned statements about the many issues contained in the previous posts. While I do admit that I hold no recognizable authority over the teachings of the religion of discussion, from what I gather it is quite known around the world and songwriter by the name of Cat Stevens changed his name to reflect his new found faith. It should be pointed out however, that Mr. Islam never sang about slavery or rape
Natalie asks what effect this pronouncement will have on the reaction of other Muslims to ISIS. My prediction is, none at all. That’s because, as we all now know, ISIS isn’t real Islam at all. The great Koranic scholar John Kerry taught us that.
I’m more interested in the effect this greater openness might have on non-Muslims. Whether you believe that ISIS and other such organizations are aberrant in Islamic culture or you believe that they are not, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore their evil. Surely, these kinds of revelations must at some point cause more people to oppose them. Even if you believe that Islamic terrorism is a product of poverty, or imperialism, or whatever the currently popular excuse is, surely at some point you have to say, “Nothing excuses that!”
Those without mercy will receive none.
Those without compassion will not enjoy its warmth from others.
Those without honor or decency will not be treated with either.
There is a form of cosmic justice in the impersonal reality of the cosmos, and a form of equilibrium that occurs in human affairs.
The book says, as ye sew, thus shall ye reap.
Or, as my buddies at lunch put it, “Payback is a bitch.”
I suspect that the open rape and slavery of women will increase the support for ISIS. Anyone with the moral fibre to oppose the savages already does so, if mass murder and terrorism was insufficient before, keeping slaves is hardly the kind of thing to push a persons opinion the other way. Rape is only abhorred in the civilised west as a common custom, and among women if they suspect they are the targets. But women are quite comfortable with rape under circumstances where it is deemed a suitable punishment for the victim, such as being a Kurd. Rape is also culturally acceptable, if only in whispers, in a good deal of the less civilised parts of the world.
This will only increase the interest of the evil people out there who may not have joined the cause for simple murder but will be highly interested in rape and sexual torture. These people are savages and should be judged by that, not by what we’d like civilised people to think.
@ Tedd,
I think you underestimate the power of motivated reasoning. Those who hate their own people more than muslims will continue to excuse their behavior and overlook their atrocities. And even when they cannot, did you know that christians had the inquisition, the US has intermittantly committed war crimes and lynching and therefore we should never talk about open industrialized sexual violence? This may shift the percentages a point or two, but will ultimately have little effect.
The battle lines are already drawn. FFS, the Achille Lauro was thirty years ago. That didn’t change anyone’s mind. Those who side with political islam against their own aren’t about to stop just because some third world women got raped. Hell, I don’t think they’d stop if it was actually them getting raped. It is more important that we all understand that it is christians, westerners, Americans who are the real threats. Make no mistake, leftism is rooted not in “justice” or “equality”, but in a deep and abiding hatred for one’s own civilization and the nihilistic need to see it destroyed.
In 1936 the West managed to send several tens of thousands volunteers to Spain to fight for communism (state slavery for men and women alike). I mean the International Brigades.
Where are the brigades of volunteers to fight for freedom and against barbarism? It would be nice to see, in particular, a brigade of volunteer sisters from the Feminist movement of USA.
Meantime, all the volunteers from the West are Arabs who go to fight FOR ISIS. this includes Arabs from Israel, among them a brilliant doctor.
There are also several volunteers from the Netherlands and Germany who went to fight against ISIS, but they seem to be of Kurdish descent.
Jacob: I have wondered this myself.
The only thing I can think of is that in the 30’s (western) people actually believed in causes, and now they don’t.
Why this may be has been endlessly discussed here and elsewhere.
See also http://pjmedia.com/…/why-sam-harris-is-wrong-about-islam/
Tarrou:
I don’t dispute that there are people such as you describe. But most people are not university professors or op ed journalists, and self-loathing nihilism simply does not explain most of the people I know who lean toward Islamic apologia.
A better explanation for most is naive faith in said professors and journalists combined with a willingness to believe them that is based in “white privilege” guilt. Such people can change in the face of new evidence, if it is sufficiently powerful. I can think of several such examples, post-9/11. And the brutality of ISIS probably is sufficiently powerful. If it does not sway a significant number of people it will be because, as with Stalin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein, they will be shielded from it by self-loathing nihilists who knowingly suppress the information.
This returns us to an issue from another comment thread a little while ago: Will the internet result in people’s opinions being swayed by evidence of ISIS’s brutality, or will it assist those who hope to suppress such information, by isolating those already predisposed to Islamic apologia in bias-confirming bubbles? I would like to think the former, but so far I’m not encouraged by the evidence.
Tedd, I simply don’t see how anyone can be shielded from such information in this day and age (as opposed to the days and ages of Stalin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein). What am I missing?
There is a confusion at the heart of much of this discussion. Muslims follow the Prophet Mohammed and his actions and sayings. Thus, if you do as Mohammed did you are moral. Slave taking, rape, murder, beheading, extorting agreement under pain of torture or death, lying to your opposition; all these are moral if you follow Mohammed’s example. No matter how ‘enlightened’ or ‘agnostic’ or even ‘atheist’ Western civilization becomes, it takes its’ moral stance from the prophet Jesus. His actions and words were non-violent, forgiving sinners and helping the weak. He forced no-one to follow him. This is why western writers imagine that Muslim activists are not moral and their actions are repugnant to any civilized person. Muslims have a different morality! That is why surveys keep showing that a majority of Muslims believe Osama Bin Laden was a top guy. To address this issue properly, Westerners must remember where their moral code comes from. They don’t have to believe in God, but they must understand that the moral code they use is not the only possible moral code. When the basic definition of good is sufficiently different between two groups of people, it is almost impossible to have a peaceful or positive relationship. When westerners are appalled at Christians being beheaded simply for not being Muslim, Muslims are saying yes, that is exactly what Mohammed would have done. Good work!
Alisa:
I have not actually tried the experiment, so perhaps my intuition is wrong, but I suspect that if I asked the members of my extended family who lean left (which would be a solid majority), and my many friends who lean left, few if any of them would be aware of these recent revelations about ISIS. Or, if they were aware of them, they would be aware of them as having been framed within some context that conformed to leftist prejudices. Keep in mind that these are people who only a few years ago thought Bashar al-Assad was a swell guy (presumably, because he was anti-American). Their entire frame of reference for all world events is radically different from mine (and, I suspect, yours).
Alisa, IMHO, TMI!!!
Thanks Tedd. I have to admit that that is difficult for me to imagine, but that is probably because of where I live and the people I tend to talk to on the internet. You may well be correct, and if so, that is not encouraging, to put it mildly.
Jeremy – also addressed others arguing in a similar vein,
When talking to other audiences I have often said more or less what you do here. Our nice western Judeo-Christian-liberal-egalitarian assumptions are not universal. Jihadis have been saying clearly for years that they don’t share these assumptions and it’s time we took them at their word.
Nonetheless talking to this audience now, the point that needs making is that until quite recently an awful lot of the Muslim world, even including violent Jihadis, were infected with Western assumptions to some extent. An awful lot of the Muslim world still is. Sometimes when googling I come across websites in English aimed at Muslims – forums, newspapers and magazines in Muslim countries, Muslim matchmaking sites and the like. The comments on them often display a desire to meld traditional Muslim ethics with broadly Western ethics. Whether this can be done is not the issue; they certainly wish to try.
So do the Saudis, and our leaders openly lick their bums. Sexual slavery in Saudi Arabia is commonplace, its also likely common in London, given the Saudi presence there.
And, lest we forget, the CIA, KGB, MI6, and others have never been shy about supporting known rapists.
Paul of Alexandria, thanks for the link.
Personally, I’ll take Ali Sina’s “take” on this issue over Sam Harris’s any day. Ali Sina is a former Muslim who knows what it’s about from the inside, and has been working against Muslim Supremacism for many years, whereas Harris is (whatever else) a Professional Atheist.